The Libor market model and its calibration to the South African market

Abstract:

The South African interest rate market has mainly been focused on vanilla interest rate products and hence can be seen as underdeveloped in this regard when compared, for instance, to the associated equity market. Market participants subscribe this aspect to a lack of demand and sophistication of investors within the market. This is, however, expected to change given the influx of international banks into the South African market over the past couple of years. The current market methodology, for the pricing of vanilla interest rate options in the South African market, is the standard Black model with some mechanism to incorporate interest rate smiles. This mechanism is typically in the form of the SABR model. The most signi cant drawback of this approach is the fact that it models each forward rate in isolation. Hence, there is no way to incorporate the joint dynamics between different forward rates and consequently cannot be used for the pricing of exotic interest rate options. In anticipation of these new market developments, we explore the possibility of calibrating the LIBOR market model to the South African market. This dissertation follows a bottom up approach and hence considers all aspects associated with such an implementation. The work mainly focuses on the calibration to at-the-money interest rate options. A possible extension to the SABR model, while remaining within the LMM framework, is considered in the final chapter. Copyright